The word “indeed” appears 64 times in the Bible and the word “splendid” only 3. I am impressed!

Hum. Anyway, there’s some trivia for the few who know what I’m on about.

I was intending to sit down and think about something I read last night but got massively tired and so could not be bothered. I was doing the whole random flick thing and I ended up in Lamentations of all places. I might have a shot a resurrecting what I was thinking about but I don’t know how well that will happen.

So, Lamenations 3 if you go through it slowly, you work out what an absoultely shocking place Jeremiah (I think) was in – then you hit verse 19 or something and realise it’s him recounting what has happened. I guess what I was thinking was somewhere along the lines of, what cause have we to complain?

So the first 18 verses or so tell pretty much how one person has gone through everything from,
captivity, darkness, shame, mockery, peace deprivation, physical mutilation, being shot at by arrows (which mentally I assume you would know that this utter pain would be coming and you have been given the glorious interviening time to thereby think about and anticpate the feeling).
I do not know how metaphorical it is meant to be, but whether the lot is entirely literal or half-half it is pretty much as bad as you can prossibly get. Death is staring you in the face but the pain and torture beforehand quite possibly outweighs the ending of it all.

I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.

Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

-Lamentations 3:20-23

He still hopes. I did not know this passage came from Lamenations. I’ve heard the, “They are new every morning, great is your faithfulness” a lot before. Contextualising it adds half a wow factor.

The next bit grabbed my attention as I was half thinking about patience within a certain arena. The, “It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.” (3:27) is quite strange. I immediately asked the question ‘Why?’.

The whole of chapter three speaks volumes about God’s will, and in someway how pathetically naive we are to understand the whys. You can disagree with my interpretation if you like.

We have nothing before God. No reason why he should listen to us complaining however huge the problem is. And he still does.

The only reason why I can see how this contridiction works, “Though he brings grief, he will show compassion… For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men” (3:32-33) is that he has to bring grief in order to get our attention about something, to make us teachable.

And there I go trying to philosophise reasons as to why ‘bad things happen’ – regardless of how much we understand, pretend to understand or most honestly just don’t know, it leaves us with only one good choice. To continue to hope. To continue to look for Him in the muck of whatever issue is at hand. To demand justice and so credit the righteousness of God.